INSPIRED GOLF 



BY 



G V 



TOWNSHEND 



Bobby Jones' 
Follow-through 



Pass Gr V^4 1 
Book k 



INSPIRED GOLF 



INSPIRED GOLF 



^' BY 

r/ b. TOWNSHEND 

EX-TREASURER OF THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY GOLF CLUB 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1921 



\ 



-I 

I 

CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I The Sin of Acedia .... 7 

II Body and Mind ..... 13 

III No Trifling 19 

IV Playing Penitente .... 24 
V Vim, Vinegar and Vitriol . . .29 

VI Intensification . . . • • 35 

VII Amaryllis in the Garden . . .40 

VIII Ambidexterity ..... 45 

IX The Philosophy of Golf . . • 5^ 

X Mere Anecdotage . . . • ' • 57 



INSPIRED GOLF 



CHAPTER I 
THE SIN OF ACEDIA 

THIS little work is a humble attempt to come 
to the rescue of the golfing backslider. The 
backslider may be taken to be a player who, 
after having been for some time familiar with 
the game of golf, finds himself (or herself) slipping 
steadily back instead of forwards, which for a 
keen hand is a truly miserable state to fall into. 
The victim of the lapse is quite aware that some- 
thing or other has gone radically wrong with his 
golf, and yet he is quite unable to discover what 
is the matter. He tries desperately hard to cure 
himself, only to find that he grows more and more 
uncertain of his stroke ; and in this unhappy 
condition he is apt to fall into the sin of acedia. 
Acedia is an old monkish term for a spiritual 
numbness, a sort of dull acceptance of the fatal 
feeling that nothing is or can be of any use. When 
this state of acedia proves to be chronic, as too 
often happens, the victim sees an awful future 
before him ; he sees himself as a weak and erring 

7 



8 



INSPIRED GOLF 



brother, knowing that such he must ever be, and, 
worst of all, not caring. 

Take heart, poor victim ! Others before you 
have suffered, and some at least have found out 
what to them has opened a way of escape. Try, 
at any rate, the simple remedy I offer. You can 
fall no lower than you are ; you may take a 
turn for the better. And with my very best 
wishes for your salvation I plunge in medias res. 

I take for granted that (like myself) you are 
either a regular double-figure handicap man or 
else your backsliding has brought you so low 
that your allowance ought to be reckoned in 
double figures, and that, in short, your present 
plight is such as to leave you not the shadow 
of a chance against a scratch player unless he 
concedes you a dozen strokes or more. Take 
yourself as such then ; and now you need not 
be too proud to condescend to the comforting 
assistance of a liberal tee. A tee only a single 
millimetre in height m.ay suit the ideal of the 
plus handicap man, the great artist in golf ; and 
if it pleases you to imitate him do so ; but re- 
member that for you his ideal method may prove 
only a hindrance, just as of old the armour of 
Saul was to David. You know yourself for a 
weak brother ; very well, then, accept the fact, and 
do not be afraid to accept anything that helps 
your weakness. The plus man, as I said, may tee 
up his ball only one millimetre or the twenty-fifth 
part of an inch. Do you tee up yours a quarter 
of an inch, a half inch, a whole inch, nay two 



THE SIN OF ACEDIA 9 



inches even, if by any means you can but give 
yourself the confidence that you are not going 
either to top it or to schlaff. Take a club, take 
any club you like, driver, brassy, cleek, iron, 
stand six feet back from the ball, and try a 
preliminary swing at a daisy : if there are no 
daisies a scrap of paper or a gun-wad will do as 
well. Address your daisy, and waggle as much 
as you like. Even a weak brother (or sister) 
has the right to waggle every bit as well and 
every bit as much as the plus player. While 
you waggle watch your breathing, watch just 
how you draw the air into your lungs and exhale 
it again. Now inhale deeply, then exhale, waggling 
all the time, and as you finish exhaling sole your 
club behind the daisy. Keep the club soled a 
moment while you draw in a full inspiration, 
shut your lips tight, and hold your breath. Now, 
now — instantly but slowly — take the club up — 
still holding the breath — up to the top of the 
swing, pause there for the barest fraction of a 
second, and then swiftly deliver your blow. Not 
till the club comes away after passing the daisy 
are you to let your breath go out fully and freely. 
This is the inspiration I speak of, this delivery 
of the blow when the lungs are filled with air 
and the breath is held. Here is the secret out 
at last. Practise it, j^es, practise it assiduously, 
with faith and hope, and what before seemed 
impossible v/ill come easy to you. You will cease 
to slide backwards ; you will be another golfer, 
a new man. 



10 



INSPIRED GOLF 



There is no mystery about the thing, no faking, 
no doping, no magic. It is no mechanical trick 
of a fancy club fitted with a concealed spring, 
or of a new ball filled with something more elastic 
than rubber. The secret is in you, in yourself. 
Here, inside your chest, you have lungs ; fill 
them, and strike with them filled. There you 
have it ! You cannot believe in so simple a 
remedy ? Try it. 

Of course inspiration does not supersede all 
the knowledge, the painfully hard-won knowledge, 
of golf which you already possess. For the most 
part the old maxims that you have so often 
repeated to yourself were true before, and they 
remain as true as ever still. 

Take only a few of them : 

1. Eye on the ball. 

2. Slow back. 

3. Start the club up with the wrists. 

4. Left wrist hollow not arched. 

5. Grip with the fingers. 

6. Grip tight with the left. 

7. Grip tighter in the down swing. 

8. Upper arms near the body. 

9. Left hip well round towards the ball. 

10. Left shoulder well down to the ball. 

11. Backbone the axis of swing. 

12. Head as still as possible. 

13. Follow through with the arms. 

14. Hands away. 

15. Left foot at finish firm on the ground. 



THE SIN OF ACEDIA 



11 



Well, there are fifteen of them, anyway, to be 
thought of at once and consecutively ; they might 
easily be multiplied to a full hundred, a figure 
enough to make the golfer recall the predicament 
of the unfortunate insect with her hundred legs : 

The centipede was happy quite 

Until the toad in fun 
Said, * Pray which leg goes after which ? ' 
And worked her mind to such a pitch 
She lay distracted in the ditch 

Considering how to run. 

The golfer's grip of the stance with his feet 
has been described as almost quadrumanous, but 
his brain has to work more like clockwork even 
than a centipede's. 

Moreover the fifteen maxims above cited are 
all positive commandments, all ' thou-shalts ' ; of 
' thou-shalt-nots ' the list is just as long : don't 
press . . . don't sway . . . and so forth. 

But there, never mind the number, and don't 
let them worry you ; have faith in inspiration, 
and go on swinging cheerfully at the modest 
daisies on your lawn. I say on your lawn, for 
that is the sort of quiet place where you should 
first practise inspiration, if the idea, as I assume, 
be new to your mind. For Heaven's sake do give 
the new idea a fair chance and don't let it run 
away with you ; don't go off at once to make 
a match with a friend and proceed to play round 
with the notion that this novelty of inspiration 
is going to do you a lot of good. The novelty 
will infallibly thrust all the older ideas into the 



12 



INSPIRED GOLF 



background, and though you may have been 
badly off your game before you may find there 
are lower depths still to which you can fall, which 
is very far from the result I am aiming at. 

No, the new idea must be introduced discreetly 
and without disturbance to the great company 
of ideas already huddling together in the dimly 
lit chambers of your inner self. I sincerely hope 
that inspiration will prove a godsend to you, 
but the pressing need is to prevent it from be- 
coming a curse and upsetting your poor bewildered 
brain worse than the centipede's. How to solve 
this problem will be the next point that we have 
to consider. 



CHAPTER II 



BODY AND MIND 

TO make the idea of * inspiration ' fit in with 
the other ideas on the golfing swing already 
packed away in your mind is the next question. 
You take up a club in order to swing at a daisy 
with the whole of the fifteen maxims I have before 
quoted lying doggo in your subconscious self, each 
simply aching to attract your attention. As you 
swing, some one of them will have succeeded in 
pushing itself into the foreground of the mental 
view, while the others are half, or hardly half, 
perceived in the background. And right into the 
limelight in the foreground of this mental picture 
you now have to crowd yet another item, the deep 
inspiration I recommended. How are you to 
manage it ? 

This is a problem in experimental psychology 
(which is all the go nowadays) and by attacking it 
we raise ourselves to the dignity of philosophers. 
But philosophy is nothing if not scientific, so let 
us ensure that our psychological experiment is 
made scientifically. We must eliminate to begin 
with, so far as we can, all outside distracting influ- 
ences. Therefore, I say, try your experiment 

13 



14 



INSPIRED GOLF 



quietly in solitude by yourself. Let me repeat, 
of all things don't begin to experiment when you 
are actually engaged in a match with an opponent. 
You will most likely lose your match, which matters 
little, and you will probably ruin your experiment, 
which to you may matter much. For the nervous- 
ness you will feel in trying it in a match, when you 
know that if you fail you will infallibly proceed to 
nag at yourself the whole of the rest of the round 
for having thrown the game away, is enough by 
itself to spoil any stroke. As you value your 
future golf, then, do not experiment like that. Try 
the new way of striking when the fate of the ball 
is a matter of no importance whatever. That is 
the true method of science. 

Choose therefore a quiet part of the links where 
you will not be in anybody's way : choose also one 
where you are not likely to lose your ball. For if 
you are in a state of anxiety lest you should hit 
somebody else, or lest your ball should fly off into 
the rough and hide, your mind will be distracted. 
As you swing, you will be thinking of what may 
happen to the ball, and your eye which you are 
trying to keep on the spot where the ball lies will 
be instinctively fidgeting to follow its flight. To 
escape this temptation I advise you to experiment 
with captive balls. The plus man may scoff at 
them, saying that with a captive ball you can't tell 
whether you hook or sHce. He is right enough 
there, of course, but then we are not out just now 
to contend with hooking and sUcing ; we are after 
something else. And that something else can be 



BODY AND MIND 



15 



very successfully observed with a captive ball 
in your own garden. 

You can easily buy a captive ball or make 
one for yourself. A golf-ball hampered by a yard 
of double string with a pair of champagne corks 
at the end can hardly be induced to fly fifty yards 
even by the strongest driver, while you as a w^eak 
brother m.ay quite likely find forty to be your 
full limit. But if you haven't got forty yards of 
free range in your garden all you have to do is 
to tie on more corks. You can stop the strongest 
flier in ten yards if you only put on clogs enough. 

Next we come to the question of teeing up. 
I cannot believe that even a high tee does a weak 
brother any harm, whatever its effect may be 
on the plus man, and I am sure that if you want 
to save the turf of your lawn from unsightly 
scars you will have to use a tee. This again 
can be bought in the market at a price anywhere 
from twopence to two shillings, and of these 
tees of the shop there are many varieties : or 
you may commandeer from the gardener or buy 
at the ironmonger's a foot or so of common rubber 
garden hose, an inch or | of an inch in diameter, 
and cut it (with a wetted knife) into tees of any 
height you choose. I should recommend you to 
cut it into sizes of ^, |, f, and one inch in height. 
Join them in assorted pairs, with a bit of red 
rag tied between, to keep them from going off 
too far and to make them easy to find. 

So now at last we are ready for action. Tee 
up a captive, home-made or bought, and take your 



16 



INSPIRED GOLF 



club in hand. Stand back in order that you 
may try a preliminary swing at a daisy, and watch 
your own mind as you strike. After you have 
struck ask yourself immediately what you re- 
member having had in the foreground of your 
mental view. The inspiration was there, of course : 
you were out for that : you can scarcely fail to 
remember how you first ex-spired as you soled 
your club, and then in-spired deeply while keeping 
the club-face close to the ball, how you continued 
to hold the breath in during the up-swing, and 
breathed it out as the stroke finished. There 
was no difficulty about that : the novelty of the 
idea of inspiration enabled you to keep your 
attention firmly fixed. 

But how about the other fifteen points, which 
you had in your mental background, in the keeping 
of the unconscious self ? What happened to them ? 
Tax your memory sternly, demand whether it can 
recall anything of any of them. Ask it first as to 
the beginning of the swing. Did the wrists start 
the club back ? Did they take it up slow ? Was 
the left wrist flexed so as to be hollow at the 
top ? During that sequence of three motions, 
or rather three parts of one m.otion, you were 
primarily, no doubt, busy over the question of 
inspiration or keeping the lungs full ; but you 
must bully your memory to tell you something 
about those other three also. How much it will 
tell is bound to vary indefinitely with the indi- 
vidual who makes the experiment. Smith's 
memory may be able distinctly to recall the 



BODY AND MIND 



17 



details of all three. Jones's may have no definite 
picture of any ; all it contains may be a vague 
idea that the left wrist was bent out stiffly when 
at the top, and consequently the up swing was 
not given time enough to finish itself out and the 
down swing began a little too soon, with the 
result that the body came through before the 
arms. There is a whole train of causation here. 
If the wrist had been well hollowed, or bent under, 
at the top, the left hip would have had time to 
get twisted round opposite the ball and the body 
need not have got before the arms. 

Suppose yourself to be Jones, and suppose your 
memory to have retained thus much of the action. 
Swing again (waggle and ex-spire, sole and in- 
spire) and mind, now, you flex that wrist right at 
the top. You strike. Round comes the club 
with a whish-h-h, and you are conscious not only 
that you did contrive to hold your breath but also 
that you did flex that wrist rightly. You managed 
to have both images in the foreground of your 
mind at once, so to speak, the tightly closed 
mouth and the flexed, hollowed wrist ; you had 
to do a sort of mental squint, but both things 
were in the view. 

Perhaps you did not manage it. In that case 
swing again and see if you can control your mental 
action better. Never mind the rest of the fifteen 
old maxims ; concentrate on that last one only, 
the hollowing or flexing of the wrist at the top, 
not of course forgetting inspiration. I have set 
you really an easy task, for by the time you get 

2 



18 



INSPIRED GOLF 



to the top of the swing you have about done 
with the inspiring ; the breath is ready to be 
exhaled, and the effort to hold it may be allowed 
to relax, while the effort to give that flex to the 
wrist continues. 

Now then, address the solid ball itself and not 
the meek daisy this time. Sole your club. Swing. 
Let her go ! Hurrah, you have managed it. You 
did flex the wist without having forgotten to hold 
the breath. You have made an experiment in 
psychology, and your golf begins to be inspired. 



CHAPTER III 



NO TRIFLING 

WELL, you have now had one shot if no 
more at inspired golf, and the next question 
for you is whether you care to go on with it. 
People do vary so very greatly with regard to 
matters of this sort ; some folks are quite able 
to make up their minds in half a minute as to 
whether a thing is going to suit them, or the con- 
trary ; whereas others may take a month to think 
about it, and then they don't know. If you 
hear me talk,'' as the Far West cowboys used to 
say when I was ranching out there fifty years 
^go, you will scarcely content yourself with giving 
inspiration so mean a test as only a bare half 
minute ; you will try it, at the least, let us say, 
for half an hour. And be sure that you make 
that half hour's trial a fair one. Whether you 
choose to strike at a free ball on the links or at 
a captive in the garden give your mind wholly 
to the act of striking, and do .it with ' intention ' 
in the full philosophic sense of the wwd. Don't go 
w^orrying yourself about what may happen to the 
ball ; leave that to take care of itself ; concentrate 
absolutely on what you do in the striking. 

19 



20 



INSPIRED GOLF 



There lies the essence of all practice that is 
to be of any real worth to you, concentration. 
Knocking a golf ball casually about may be good 
enough as a form of exercise in order to open 
your pores and limber up your muscles, but it 
won't help your golf much. To improve, you 
must bend your whole mind to the shot. Twenty 
shots struck with intention are of more value 
than two hundred which are only half meant. 
Give yourself time to think between them ; twenty 
in half an hour will be quite enough. And use 
self-examination. Analyse after each stroke ; 
think where it differed from the previous stroke ; 
think of what you would wish to alter in the next. 
Don't beat your breast or use Western cowboy 
swears, if you top or foozle. Say to yourself 
plainly, that happened because I broke some 
law,'' and then see if you can spot which law it 
was, and when and how you broke it. Tee up 
again, and try not to break the same law in the 
same way next time. Above all don't worry. 
Smile at your failures. Smile. 

Remember that your practice should not go 
on too long. Such powers of attention as your 
mind may have are invaluable, but they are also 
easily overstrained. Look backwards and reflect 
on the days of your youth, when you were a 
boy at school ; how long a single hour in form 
then seemed, how weary and inattentive your 
mind used to grow before the end. Yet then 
you only had Latin and Greek to wrestle with, 
or perhaps EucUd. Now you are up against golf, a 



NO TRIFLING 



21 



very different proposition from trifling with Propria 
quae maribus or the Pons Asinorum. As I once 
heard a wise old clerical golfer exclaim with fervent 
emphasis, Remember you can't trifle with golf ! 

He was absolutely right, and therefore you can- 
not afford to trifle with this inspiration idea. No, 
give the cure I have ventured to suggest to you 
a fair show ; don't give it only the dregs of your 
mind ; let each inspired shot have the full benefit of 
every atom of will-power you can dispose of. If you 
do this faithfully you soon will be able to judge 
whether the cure is likely to suit your case or not. 

Suppose it does not, then cadit quaestio. There 
is nothing more to say, and you may shut up 
these pages ; it will be better for you to go on as 
you are. But if the inspiration tip shows signs 
of being a help, then don't hurry the cure. Don't 
start out to make trial of it by going out at once 
to play in a match and insisting on sedulously 
inspiring before each shot. Of course you might 
do so and find it a help right from the start, but 
you might also find it tend to make you too 
self-conscious and so put you off. Go on and 
play your match by all means, golf is a game 
and what you are after is amusement, but don't 
insist to yourself while playing that you are going 
to inspire. If when you strike off you find that 
your breath is incUned to hold itself, as it were 
automatically, why let it do so, but don't worry 
over it. Don't go asking yourself every time 
did you or did you not inspire before that shot. 
On the contrary, try to play your game in your 



22 



INSPIRED GOLF 



ordinary style as far as you conveniently can, 
letting all this new inspiration business slide. 

But the next day — or better still the same day, 
after you have finished your game and have had 
tea and rested — then take out a club and ball 
and give your inspired golf a few minutes trial, 
just enough to be interesting but not to make 
you feel stale. Do this daily for a week, and then 
go out and play a match in which at every tee, 
and if you like, before every shot through the 
green, and before every putt, you practise this 
new scheme of inspiration. A week will have 
given you time to adjust yourself to the new 
dodge mentally and bodily, and you now are not 
likely to find that it makes you produce anything 
worse than the weak brother's usual performance 
with which you are only too painfully familiar. 
Even if j^ou do fall below your own humble par, 
you may ask yourself whether this is not simply 
due to nervousness caused by the novelty, and 
try whether after playing a few more matches 
this first nervousness v/ill not disappear. If you 
still find yourself losing games steadily when you 
know that you ought not, then you will at last have 
a fair right to say, Inspiration for me is a fraud." 

Here let me make you a present of one sug- 
gestion. It is just possible that there was no need 
for you to inspire, because you had already been 
practising it unconsciously, just as Moliere's 
bourgeois gentilhomme had talked prose all his 
life without knowing it. There is such a thing 
as a habit changing itself automatically^^and this 



NO TRIFLING 



23 



may have been the case with you. Think over 
the past. Was there ever a time when you 
noticed a sudden improvement in your game ? 
Possibly at that very time you did, quite spon- 
taneously, adopt my remedy. James Braid has 
told us that from being only a moderate driver 
(moderate in his class, that is) he suddenly became 
a long one without knowing why. Can it have 
been due to an unconscious alteration in his way 
of breathing ? If so he must be the very Monsieur 
Jourdain of golf. 

Well, we may leave that matter to settle itself ; 
each of us must analyse his own inner conscious- 
ness in his own way. But let us suppose that 
after a week's private practice you try inspiration 
in a match and find that you seem to be the better 
for it rather than the worse. Then go ahead, 
but continue practising your new method in private 
as well as in matches. 

And do not forget that if Monsieur Jourdain's 
prose was unconsciously acquired the rest of the 
desired accomplishments were attained by pur- 
poseful application. The bon bourgeois did not 
trifle over the education of a gentilhomme, but 
carefully concentrated himself on what might seem 
the most trivial of details. You should imitate him 
on this point no less carefully, and whether you are 
thinking of inspiration, or wrist work, or follow 
through, or any other maxim, at the very instant of 
the act you must focus your whole mind on it, and, 
as the writer of Proverbs has it, ' Do it with thy 
might.' There is to be no trifling with golf. 



CHAPTER IV 



PLAYING PENITENTE 

WE may suppose now that the idea of inspired 
golf has become tolerably familiar to 
your mind, and that you no longer need to keep 
the limelight on it so strongly while you address 
the ball. The next step in our course of experi- 
mental psychology is to see just how large a variety 
of the older ideas stowed away in our subconscious 
self we can combine with the act of inspiration 
at the moment of striking. Variety, that's what 
we need to keep us from being bored ; and did 
not Voltaire, the great philosopher, say of educa- 
tion, " Every method is good except the one that 
bores you.'* The same thought occurred to 
Lin McClean, the cowboy hero of Owen Wister's 
cleverest story, when he suddenly determined 
to quit cow- punching, and remarked to the startled 
ranch foreman who wanted to know why, What's 
the matter with some variety ? '' 

Here, then, is the particular variety that I would 
next offer you. Tee up, as before, and I don't 
care a jot whether you tee a free ball on the links 
or a captive in the garden ; and begin operations 
once again with the usual preliminary swing, 

24 



PLAYING PENITENTE 25 



You have already got the habit of inspiration at 
t he beginning of the stroke as well as of using the 
wrists properly, even at the risk of giving yourself 
a mental squint by the attempt to keep both points 
steadily in view at the same time. Now I propose 
to introduce a third object into the foreground of 
your mental view, namely the posture at the finish. 
Consider the many fine finishes you have seen when 
watching golfers strike off, and the many pictures 
you have admired in books and newspapers which 
have been taken of them in the act. What is it that 
has struck you most ? I suppose the way in which 
the arms and hands have come out away from 
the body in front and very often have swung clean 
round to the left till the club has finished right down 
behind the back. Not all the fine players bring 
the club so far round, but all, I think without 
exception, get the hands away so that the club 
comes right through. Tell yourself that you will 
do the same as you address your daisy for the 
preliminary swing. As before, you can put down 
a gun-wad or a scrap of paper if you happen to be 
short of daisies. 

Swing, then, remembering both to inspire and 
to flex the wrist, and also to insist on the club 
coming through. Perhaps you find that the club 
seems to wish to pull itself up short before the 
finish is completed. If so, don't let it do so ; 
shove it on ; keep it moving, aye, till it fairly hits 
you in the small of the back. Hitting yourself 
in the small of the back may be an exaggeration 
of the ideal follow-through, but then it pays to 



26 



INSPIRED GOLF 



exaggerate sometimes. Mj^ name for this exagger- 
ated finish do\ra the back is playing the Penitente. 

Let me tell you why. On a certain day in Lent, 
now alas ! over forty years ago, I rode into a very 
remote village of what was then the very remote 
Territory of New Mexico. I saw the people 
(many of whom I knew) standing about in 
groups apparently occupied in w^atching some 
performance, and then in their midst I caught 
sight of a mysterious white object, moving about 
very queerly and acting in a way that I could 
not make out or understand. I rode closer, and 
what I beheld was this. A human being, stripped 
naked save for a pair of loose white drawers, and 
also for a loose white cotton muffler that entirely 
swathed its head, was dragging itself about with 
long half-kneeling steps in a bent posture. Its 
two hands grasped a soap-weed scourge, and the 
scourge was red, and the bare back was red, and 
there were red stains on the white cotton drawers 
down below. At each dragging step the creature 
raised the hands that held the bloody scourge 
and brought it sharply over the shoulder so that 
it came with a whish-h-h down the back. This 
ghastly self -torturer was one of a band of Penitentes 
or flagellants, who publicly flogged themselves 
every year in Lent, and I was destined to learn 
a good deal more about the horrid business and 
the people who took part in it ; but that is a long 
story which I have partially told elsewhere. 

However, I have never forgotten the first sight 
of that awinl Penitente slashing himself down the 



PLAYING PENITENTS 



27 



back ; and every time on the links that I indulge 
in a preliminary swing with an exaggerated follow- 
through his figure rises before my memory. And 
if I want to remind myself of the importance of 
bringing the club right through and well down 
the back I look back upon that strange scene 
under the torrid New Mexican sun and bid myself, 
" Play Penitente." 

Those poor benighted self-torturers slashed 
their backs as a penitential atonement for their 
sins. Come on, then, weak brother, and do your 
share of penance to atone for your golfing sins 
of the past. It is up to you now, as we used to 
say out west, to be a Penitente. Fix your e\^e 
on that meek daisy, inspire, swing, strike, and 
make that club whistle through till it hits you 
where the Penitente hit himself. Now address 
the teed ball, fill your lungs again, hit it for all 
you're worth, and fetch that club through. Did 
you fail to get it through with the ball, where 
you had succeeded with the daisy ? That very 
likely was because the shock of the collision with 
the ball checked the club. Never mind. Tee 
up another, take a full breath once more, and strike 
off again. You may not succeed the second or 
even the third time, but persevere, and you will 
do so eventually and will get off a shot in which, 
after smiting not the empty air but the soHd ball, 
you find that you have succeeded in bringing the 
club quite through until it finished down across 
your back. 

Now at once apply the self-examination process, 



28 



INSPIRED GOLF 



Did you keep in mind the inspiration and the 
right use of the wrists in the up-swing as well as 
the third idea of following-through at the finish ? 
Probably you were all right with the inspiration, 
for that came at the very beginning, but possibly 
you slurred the wrist action. Anyhow you had 
better swing again and again till you manage to 
keep all three points in your mind together and 
slur none. If you like to avail yourself of a small 
material aid to this, write on a piece of paper in 
large letters 

INSPIRE 
USE WRISTS 
FOLLOW THROUGH 

and stick it up on an impromptu stand right oppo- 
site your tee, just where on many links they stick 
up a notice REPLACE THE DIVOT.'' Look 
at it before you begin the swing and fix your 
attention firmly on it. You will find the effort 
to keep this triple bill in mind rather fatiguing, 
but go on doing it steadily for several shots. Take 
a rest, lest you grow stale, and do something else 
for a few minutes. Then begin again, and repeat 
the process, always laying the chief emphasis on 
the third of the trio, the last item in your mental 
programme. Concentrate entirely upon that, upon 
the determined follow-through. Let the club hit 
you hard on the back every time. You know you 
deserve it for your past sins. At all costs make 
yourself play the Penitente. 



CHAPTER V 



VIM, VINEGAR AND VITRIOL 

SUPPOSE we proceed to try yet another little 
variety. By this time we may assume that 
a deep inspiration before each shot is taken for 
granted. The action should already have become 
part of the unconscious self so far as to be a sort 
of automatic process that we go through every 
time we address the ball. And perhaps the uncon- 
scious self will also be kind enough to take charge 
of the two other points to both of which we have 
been attending or trying to attend at one and the 
same time, namely, the use of the wrists in the 
up-swing and the prolonged follow-through at 
the finish ; we have been keeping the limelight 
on these two ; now we will put them back into 
the middle distance of the mental view and bring 
up another pair of fresh points into the foreground. 
As in the former case it will be convenient if the 
two fresh points come, not just exactly together 
in the stroke, but one later than the other. The 
first point I will take is the twist of the body : 
this goes on right through the up-swing while the 
wrists (and arms) are taking the club up. Of 
course you will carefully remind yourself to inspire 

29 



30 



INSPIRED GOLF 



as you address the ball, but be careful also not 
to think too much about it : concentrate your 
mind resolutely, and focus it on the body twist ; 
neither should you think too much about the 
wrist-work ; let your v/rists, as it were, take the 
club up of themselves (slowly) while the active 
part of your brain is busy seeing to it that your 
left hip turns clear through a right-angle till it 
comes opposite the ball. The temptation to be 
content with a twist of something less than a 
right-angle is most besetting ; it needs persistent ^ 
effort to keep the body steadily turning on the axis 
of its backbone until the left hip and shoulder 
actually get round to the ball. This is partly 
because such an almost acrobatic twisting of the 
bodily frame is a movement quite unusual, not to 
say unnatural, and partly because when you mean 
to strike, your will is wound up hard for action 
and gets impatient to be done with the necessary 
slowness of the body-twist ; what the wound-up 
will craves for is to loose off instanter in the swift 
strong blow. Keep a tight rein on the will, then ; 
check the impulse to a premature delivery of the 
blow, ever the most fatal of errors ; go on twisting 
the hip till you know it has come round opposite 
the ball ; incidentally this will give time for the 
wrists to carry the club well up and to flex them- 
selves, with the left bent in under properly, at 
the top of the swing ; never mind even if there 
should be a very perceptible moment's pause at 
the top. True the plus men seem to swing like 
lightning, with no pause anywhere ; but then, my 



VIM, VINEGAR AND VITRIOL 31 



friend, you and I are not plus men, very far from 
it ; their counsels of perfection are not for us ; 
we may permit ourselves to pause a moment at 
the top of the swing, or do anything else that may 
save us from hurrying into the error of plunging 
into the down-swing prematurely. 

Look at your daisy, then, and swing at it, keeping 
the body-twist in the hmelight of the mental view, 
pause momentarily at the top, and then smite 
that daisj^ as I once heard a Far West cowboy say, 
with vim, vinegar and vitriol. Slaughter the daisy 
thus a few times till you feel sure of j/ourself, 
and then have a go at the teed ball. After twisting 
the body so much round you will probably find 
yourself less likely than usual to hit the ball with 
the exact middle of the club-face, but if and when 
you do succeed in doing so, the ball will surely fly 
further than it ever was wont to do for you in the 
past. 

Here, then, is the first of the two fresh points 
we are trying to keep an eye on, the right-angled 
twist of the body. The second of them shall be 
a point coming later in the swing, namely the posi- 
tion of the feet and especially of the left foot at 
the finish. In your last few shots the odds are 
that if you have happened to notice your position 
at the finish you will have observed that your feet 
have moved away from the original stance. This 
may be an old trouble with you, and you may have 
long known how you are given to swing yourself 
off your stance ; but you are certainly more likely 
to find that you have done it when you got in 



32 



INSPIRED GOLF 



all that extra body work in those last shots. Now 
go over your recollections again of how a fine golfer 
shapes at the finish, recalling the details of his 
attitude either from what you have yourself 
observed or from pictures. When we looked at 
his finish before, the point to which we directed 
our attention was the way he got his hands away ; 
turn j^our ej^es now not to his hands but to his 
feet. Is not his left foot set firmly on the ground, 
with the heel well down and the weight inclining 
to lean on the outside of the foot ? Indeed so 
strongly is this particular point marked in some 
of the best photographs that they almost recall 
the idea of a skater doing the outside edge and 
striking out on the left foot. No doubt you may 
occasionally see a fine driver swing with such 
abandon that the exuberance of his finish carries 
him right off his feet, but even he only exceeds in 
this manner at a certain risk, and you may be very 
sure that his left foot is never raised before the 
ball has left the face of the club, whatever he does 
with it after. 

For an experiment, go to the opposite extreme, 
and see if you can compel yourself to do a shot with 
the maximum of immobility. Address your daisy, 
and say to yourself, Flatfooted ! Heels and toes 
both down ! " and take a full swing so. You will 
find it very hard or even impossible either to get 
the right-angled body-twist without raising the 
left heel, or to follow well through and get the 
club away^till it comes round down the back without 
having raised the right ; but never mind that ; 



VIM, VINEGAR AND VITRIOL 33 



this is only an experiment, and you had better 
neglect all other matters for the present so long 
as you keep both feet firm and flat on the ground 
the whole time. After a few preliminary trials 
at the daisy, just to assure yourself that it really 
is possible to strike without raising either foot at 
all, tee up a ball and strike it in the same manner. 
If you have happened to strike it fair you will be 
quite surprised to see how well it travels in spite 
of the rather cramped swing, and you will perhaps 
note that your shoulders at the finish came into 
a tolerably correct attitude. This will help you 
to realize that it is unnecessary to swing yourself 
off your feet, and that a full free swing that leaves 
you with the left foot firmly planted at the finish is 
likely to give the best possible results. So after 
a few of these flat-footed swings, you may allow 
first one and then both heels to rise in turn and 
see if you can contrive to let yourself go in a freer 
swing while firmly determined on keeping j'our 
stance. If you have been in the habit of falling 
off it this will not be an easy task ; but you have 
got to do it, and remember that the more vigour 
you put into the shot the harder you will find it 
to remain firm on your feet at the finish. Play 
a short mashie approach, and it is easy enough 
to keep the feet firm, but it is quite another thing 
when you put every ounce of force you have into 
a full drive. For if you are really to make it go, 
weak, half-hearted hitting is no good, and the half- 
hearted blow itself is surely a symptom of acedia 
creeping on. Don't surrender to it, then. To 
3 



34 



INSPIRED GOLF 



get distance you must put in the last ounce 
and you have got to hit that ball as the Wes- 
tern cowboy put it, with vim, vinegar and 
vitriol. 



CHAPTER VI 



INTENSIFICATION 

THERE is one extra-special petition beyond 
all others that every golfer must have often 
felt inclined to offer up : 

O wad some Power the giftie gie us 
To see oursel's as ithers see us ! 

Robert Burns may not have been a golfer, but 
he saw deep into the soul of man, and he knew 
— none better — how hard it is to get outside our- 
selves. This indeed has been the most real of the 
difficulties we have had to contend with, even 
though inspiration, the first point that we con- 
sidered, hardly requires an external view. Your 
own internal sensations can tell you all about draw- 
ing the air into 3'our lungs and holding it there, 
and you know just what you are doing without the 
aid of the eye. But when it comes to such a matter 
as the body being twisted through a right-angle or 
the wrists being properly bent at the top of the 
swing an outside view would be a real convenience. 

The best way undoubtedly to get such a view 
would be to have a cinematograph film taken 
showing you in the act of swinging ; you could 

35 



86 



INSPIRED GOLF 



I 



then study the moving picture of yourself over 
and over, and spot your faults at your leisure ; 
this might, however, cost rather more money than 
you care to spend. Let us see if we can find a 
less expensive substitute. 

The simplest method of all is to call in the aid 
of the sun, not by the roundabout plan of getting 
yourself photographed on a film, but directly. On 
a sunshiny day, then, take your stand with your 
back to the sun, club in hand, and watch the tell- 
tale shadow of yourself. It will tell you if you 
rocked sideways on your stance, if you got your 
hands away, if you came well on to the left leg 
at the finish. One thing especially you can note 
accurately by this means, how much your head 
moves during the shot. Put a mark where the 
middle oCyour shadow's head comes, at the moment 
when you are addressing the ball ; swing, and see 
where the shadow of the head has got to afterwards. 
I have tried this experiment with one of the finest 
golfers alive, one whose style experts have fre- 
quently singled out for praise, and I find that 
when he has the sun right at his back the shadow 
of his head at the finish is a good six inches more 
to the left than it was when he was addressing 
the ball. The shadow of the head does not move 
away from the mark during the up-swing, nor during 
the down-swing before the ball is hit, but after- 
wards it does move those few inches to the left, 
as also does the shadow of the body as well. I 
take this to be evidence that the fine golfer in 
question finishes with the weight of his body trans- 



INTENSIFICATION 



37 



ferred to a considerable extent to the left foot, 
and this accords exactly with the impression left 
by the numerous pictures illustrating the way 
in which an ideal finish shows the left foot firmlj^ 
planted and supporting the body. In ascertaining 
how far your own swing fulfils these desirable 
conditions you can have no better ally than the sun. 

Take in the next place another most essential 
point, that of the firmness of the grip, and ask 
yourself, Do you intensify in the down-swing ? 

Neither your own eye nor some friendly instruc- 
tor's eye can tell you anything whatever about that; 
it is purely a matter of internal self-observation. 
Swing at a daisy, and note the grip of either 
hand. What is your rule with regard to it ? 
According to the best advice you should take firm 
hold with your left hand in order to start the club 
up with the wrist, and you are to keep that hold 
till the club gets to the top. The right hand must 
grip loosely in order to allow the club to turn as 
it goes up. To clench the club tightly with both 
hands inevitably produces a stiff cramped swing 
that would not do at all. But if you go on to 
perform the down-swing with this same loose grip 
the blow is likely to be both feeble and inaccurate. 
As the club descends the grip Of both hands should 
tighten so that at the moment of impact the club 
is held as firmly as possible. The force of the blow 
delivered by the whole of your bodily fram.e has to 
be transferred to the club by the hands and then 
by the club to the ball. Supposing, then, that the 
hands holding the club are slack they cannot but 



88 



INSPIRED GOLF 



fail efficiently to transmit the force of the body to 
the ball, and the resulting blow will be feeble. 

If on consideration you come to the conclusion 
that your grip is weak you may try to strengthen 
it if you like by various gymnastic exercises, such 
as by squeezing balls, using dumbells, and so forth, 
or even by simply clenching your hands tightly at 
intervals during the day whenever your memory 
reminds you to do so. This sort of thing is in- 
effably tedious, but there is no doubt you can 
thus strengthen your grip very considerably if you 
will be at the pains. 

Do not forget, moreover, to look at the grips 
of your clubs occavSionally ; the place where the 
fingers come is apt to get polished and wants to 
be roughened again with a few touches of the file. 
Some men use pitch to help them to keep tight 
hold of the club, and presumably they find it to 
their advantage. If you try this do it cautiously, 
for if you are thin-skinned a grip with too much 
pitch on it — too much for you, that is — would be 
quite liable to skin your hands. In all such 
matters, of course, common sense is above all 
necessary. There is no need to play the fool and 
say, Happy thought ! try pitch,'' and go out to 
play in a competition after putting a lot of adhesive 
stick-stuff on your clubs for the first time in your 
golfing life. The right place for a man who acted 
like that would be the golf-course attached to an 
idiot asylum. 

I believe some men have experimented with oval 
and polygonal grips, but the innovation can hardly 



INTENSIFICATION 



39 



be said to have become popular. Possibly it 
may suit a few people. All one can say about it 
is to repeat the old jest, For those v/ho like this 
sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they would 
like." Similarly rubber grips seem to suit some 
golfers better than leather. And similarly one 
can only say, Chacun son gout.'' 

To return to this question of intensifying : the 
little dodges and appliances above mentioned may 
or may not be of some use ; they can hardly make 
much difference ; the all important thing is your 
own will-power. Fix your mind on taking the 
club up with a firm (but not a desperate) grip ; 
then, as it descends in the down-swing, tighten 
your fingers on it for all you are worth. Nothing, 
inspiration only excepted, will do your blow so 
much good as this intensification of the grip at the 
psychological moment. It must take place in 
what is only a fraction of a second, and it must 
take place in the proper fraction of the second. Do 
it before the down-swing begins, and you cramp 
yourself ; do it after the club has hit the ball, 
and it is a mere futility. There is only one proper 
fraction of a second in the case, and that comes 
during the first half of the down-swing. See if 
you can stab your will broad awake to put " vim, 
vinegar and vitriol '' into that proper fraction. 
I have no objection to offer to the gymnastics, or 
the^hand-grip exercises, or to taking up carpentering 
as a finger exercise, and all the rest of it ; but these 
things are mere aids : what is vital at the critical 
quarter-second is the power of the will. Intensify. 



CHAPTER VII 



AMARYLLIS IN THE GARDEN 

I CANNOT claim to be the first to apply the 
word inspiration to golf, for putting by itself 
is an inspiration, as some one before me has well 
remarked ; and I fancy some of us know the happy 
feeling of being truly inspired on those glorious 
days when all our putts seem to go right of them- 
selves. Alas ! those occasions are painfully rare 
compared to the less happy but too oft-recurring 
daj^s when our putts either mostly go wrong or, 
if right, seem to get there by a pure fluke. Now, 
the question is, does inspiration of the special 
brand I advocate help towards this truly inspired 
putting or the reverse ? 

Personally I cannot declare positively that it 
does help ; but this much I will say : my inspira- 
tion, by which I mean striking the ball with the 
lungs filled and the breath held, does undoubtedly 
tend to keep the head still, and in putting the 
importance of keeping the head still is the one point 
on which all the golfing authorities that I have ever 
heard of are agreed. Except on that single point 
the teachers of golf disagree more or less in their 
doctrines about putting, and where great doctors 

40 



AMARYLLIS IN THE GARDEN 41 



disagree I most assuredly am not going to be so 
presumptuous as to trot out any private prescrip- 
tion of my own. Or, if I did, it would have to 
be a mere vague aphorism, a generalisation such 
as certain quacks love to ladle out, something 
couched in this sort of style : There is no bad 
putting, there is only wrong thinking, wrong 
belief." 

This does sound like quackery, but all the same 
the dictum really has a core of value hidden in it, 
just as some appalling quacks have unquestionably 
got hold of very real truths. Only believe in your 
heart that you can putt ; only force yourself to 
have faith ; your long putts will veritably go as dead 
as Colonel Bogey's, your short putts will go in. 
Quackery or not, that this is true I from my heart 
believe ; nevertheless it does not quite solve the 
problem, because even as you look steadily at the 
ball and draw back the putter to strike, how are 
you to tell whether you do actually believe or 
whether j^our forced faith is no more than a make- 
believe ? For there are two sides to your brain, 
and while one says, I believe,'' the other may 
sneer aside, Self-deceiver, you don't ! " 

So there you are. Faith is the solution, but 
who can show us the recipe for getting faith ? 
Every one of us knows that if only he has confidence 
he can putt with anything at all in the shape of 
a putter, be it of iron, aluminium, or wood, be it 
made with an upright lie or a flat lie, with a long 
shaft or with a short one ; ay, he can putt with 
a walking-stick or an umbrella handle if it comes 



42 



INSPIRED GOLF 



to that ; nothing matters if only you can and do 
beUeve that you can. Potes quia posse videris. 

But though I dare offer you no recipe for getting 
faith, weak brother, I maj^ say a word or two 
as to practice. One way of salvation for players 
such as you and I are is to practise hard at our 
putting, and the plan I recommend to you is to 
keep a private spook, a Bogej^ Colonel of your own, 
and play against him, provided that, as with all 
other practising, you don't go on at it too long and 
get stale. Remember that great aphorism of 
Voltaire's about education : Every method is 
good except the one that bores you." Don't let 
your putting practice be a bore, then. Make a 
course in your garden and see in what score you 
can do the round of six or nine or twelve holes, 
taking two strokes a hole as your bogey. 

Merely striking a lot of balls at a hole, hit or miss, 
is no use. You must play a whole round to score, 
and play against a recognised ideal. Then, when 
you have begun by holing, say, three holes in or 
under bogey, it becomes a real effort to keep it 
up and go on to hole the remaining three, or six, 
or nine, or whatever number of holes you may have 
agreed on with yourself as the complete round, with- 
out letting The Terrible Colonel beat you. Such 
practice is far more useful than knocking balls 
casually into holes, it is also more amusing, and of 
course it is best of all when you can get a friendly 
opponent to oblige by taking you on. 

Supposing that you find a partner for your garden 
golf you may makethegameinfinitely more varied 



AMARYLLIS IN THE GARDEN 48 



and interesting by the following scheme. Let us 
say that j^ou have laid out a course of nine holes on 
a lawn the size of a tennis ground. Give each of 
the nine holes its own name, Kop, Pisgah, Centre, 
' and so on ; you must then write each name on a 
small square of cardboard, and put the lot of them 
in your pocket. Stand at one end of the lawn and 
at haphazard draw a name from your pocket. 
You and your partner then have to tee up where you 
are standing and play to the hole you have drawn. 
As soon as you have holed out there, draw another 
name, tee up beside the hole just played, and play 
to the one you have now drawn. When the holes 
have all been drawn and played you will have done 
a nine-hole round which had this excitement about 
it, that when you started it you had and could have 
no knowledge as to the order in which the holes 
were going to come or as to their length. Rounds 
thus played would practically never come two 
alike, and consequently you must be studying fresh 
putts every time, seeing that the length of each 
hole will depend upon how far it lies from the one 
drawn immediately before. If instead of doing 
this you always play the same nine-hole course you 
get too cunning, experience teaching you the 
strength of every putt over well ; but this sim.ple 
device of drawing the holes by lot instead of playing 
them in a fixed order affords an infinite variety, and 
makes it much more like actual play on the links. 

As physical strength counts for just nothing on 
the putting green a lady partner (if you are lucky 
enough to find one) may give you just as good a 



44 



INSPIRED GOLF 



match as a man. But if you find that when 
playing with a lady you are conscious of a natural 
repugnance to beating her (or being beaten by her !) 
try taking her in as a partner and making Colonel 
Bogey play your best ball. If that arrangement 
makes the battle too easy for the pair of you com- 
bined, you may even concede him a point, possibly 
even two points, in order to produce a desperate 
fight, but the Terrible Colonel is apt to be a stiff 
enough proposition anyhow. Take him on, then, 
and back up your partner bravely in her struggle. 
Never mind if the Colonel does beat you ; after 
all there is no harm done. Even if you have not 
sported with Amaryllis in the shade, you have 
played golf with her in the garden, and like a certain 
noble Roman you may write on your tablets, 
Diem hunc non perdidi.'' 1 have not lost 
to-day.'' And did not you enjoy yourself the 
better for her company ? I used once to know 
out in the Far West a certain truly sporting tribe 
of Red Indians (not yet, I hope, quite extinct), 
who had a fine saying, No happiness without a 
woman ! But I fear there are golfers who would 
hardly subscribe to that sentiment on the links. 



CHAPTER VIII 



AMBIDEXTERITY 

AND now let us leave our putting with Amaryl- 
lis in the garden for a while and switch off the 
train of our ideas to quite another line. I have said 
that the real difficulty you want to overcome in 
golf is mental, seeing that what is required of you 
is the concentrated effort of mind needful alike in 
order to recognise your faults and to amend them ; 
also we saw that for this purpose an outside view 
of your swing can be of great help, and that the 
weak brother would be well advised to get the 
sun at his back so that he may be enabled to detect 
his faults as they are faithfully repeated by his 
shadow. This shadow image of yourself certainly 
lends an effectual aid to visualising the various 
positions successively occupied by the head, body, 
hands, and feet, in the process of delivering the 
blow, but at the same time it can hardly help you 
much towards the mental analysis of the myste- 
rious reasons why your arms and legs should insist 
on getting themselves into the various false posi- 
tions they incline to fall into. There is a method, 
however, which some of us have found helpful 
towards this analysis, namely, to reverse every one 

45 



46 



INSPIRED GOLF 



of the bodily positions by striking the ball left- 
handed. The inversion enables the observing 
mind to follow the details of the action much closer. 

To make trial of what is in fact a very simple 
experiment borrow a club from an amiable left- 
handed friend and tee up, that is if you can harden 
your heart and persuade yourself to take a full 
left-handed shot at a solid ball, or you may simply 
try a swing or two at a daisy with the back of one 
of your own right-handed clubs. Don't worry 
over it, but slash away cheerfully, remembering 
that if the result of the experiment pleases you it 
will be a simple thing to buy a few old left-handed 
clubs cheap either from a professional or through 
the exchange columns of a newspaper, and so go 
into the thing properly equipped on your own. 

Assuming that a confiding friend has lent you 
one of his clubs, tee up with care and address your 
ball left-handed. Here, by the way, let me insert 
a caution. If j^ou are using captive balls be sure 
the string that restrains their flight lies pointing 
well forward as you address the ball. If it does 
not, the clubhead is liable to entangle itself in the 
string and then the ball becomes like a certain 
Hebrew prophet according to Voltaire, capable de 
tout. It may come right round and hit you very 
hard on the head, or fly off behind you and break 
somebody's else's head, or it may only break a 
window, but it is pretty sure to do some mischief 
or other. You have to look out for this when you 
are striking in the ordinary way, but it is particu- 
larly likely to happen when you start on so awk- 



AMBIDEXTERITY 



47 



ward a thing as striking off left-handed. Also I 
would say, and this is most important if the club 
is a borrowed one, don't tee the captive ball so 
that the club can possibly strike against the nail 
or staple to which the string is fastened. If you 
do you will find that a strongly marked impression 
has been made on the face of that club, and the 
owner w^on't love you much for that ! 

So tee up, as I said, with care,'' which is the 
way the caddies at Westward Ho ! " were of old 
taught to do, and keep your weather eye open to 
see how you are going to shape as a left-hander. 
If you happen to be naturally ambidexterous, 
even the first blow will quite possibly be all right, 
only unfortunately nature's plan is to make very 
few of us after that highly-desirable double-action 
run-both- waj^s pattern. The famous founder of 
the Boy Scouts is said to have such perfect ambi- 
dexterity that he can write two letters to two 
different people at once, one with his right hand 
and one with his left ; but then he belongs to 
the class of the ''rara avis" described by the 
old Roman writer as most like to a black swan." 

No ; more probably your first attempt at a full 
drive left-handed will end (like the marriage service) 
in amazement ; you will hear the club whistle 
through the empty air and behold the ball, still 
teed up in situ, looking you meekly in the face. 
kt this sight old memories will revive, carrying 
you back to your first week of golf, when you not 
rarely missed the globe altogether without having 
the ghost of an idea why. Be consoled, then, for 



48 



INSPIRED GOLF 



missing some of your early left-handed shots and 
persevere : you will find yourself hitting them 
presently, and probably surprise yourself by finding 
how correct the form of your left-handed finish 
can be, even though the ball may travel but a 
little distance. Why the ball should not fly far- 
ther when the swing seems correct is hard to say ; 
it may be due to the weakness of the left arm, or 
to the feebler grip of the left fingers ; but you will 
be doing uncommonly well if one shot in twenty 
goes anywhere near as far as your ordinary right- 
handed blow. The distance that you get, however, 
is not of real importance ; the point is to utilise 
the strangeness of the reversed position of the body 
so that the mind can analyse the details of its 
movements and educate itself to carry on the 
same analysis still more effectually when you 
return to right-handed striking. Concentrate on 
this, and experiment not only with a driver but 
with the other clubs. 

Let me repeat, don't worry yourself in the slight- 
est over this left-handed golf : if it amuses and 
interests you, well and good ; go on with it as long 
as it continues to do so. If you keep it up for a 
couple of weeks there is no reason why you should 
not make a match with another weak brother (or 
sister), one it may well be even weaker than your- 
self, and go out and play a whole round with 
nothing but left-handed clubs in your bag. I will 
venture a guess that you will be mightily pleased 
if at the end of the eighteen holes your score is not 
something a bit worse than sevens. 



AMBIDEXTERITY 49 



But the moment left-handed golf bores you, drop 
it like a hot potato. I am not recommending the 
thing to you as a penance, however much you may 
deserve to do penance for your golfing sins, and 
however able and willing you may be to scourge 
yourself down the back with a left-handed club 
in the most approved Penitente fashion. The 
Penitente performer, whose bleeding back sur- 
prised me so that day in New Mexico I have told 
of, was almost as ambidexterous as the founder 
of the Boy Scouts himself, so much so that he 
criss-crossed his lacerated skin with alternate right 
and left-handed strokes, laid on most impartially. 
But then he wasn't doing it to amuse himself ; 
that I can swear to ; whereas you, O weak brother, 
I hope, are getting some pleasure out of the attempt 
to find a cure for your sins ; if you can't enjoy 
yourself when you are playing a game, it is about 
time for you to get off the planet. 

So long as it amuses you, then, practise the 
method of inversion, and remember that the abihty 
to play a left-handed shot may somictimes be really 
useful. When I was teaching rifle-shooting 
(another of my hobbies) I always urged my young 
friends to shoot from the left shoulder as well as 
from the right. They may find it convenient 
some day' to aim thus round the left-hand angle 
of a wall without having to expose the whole body, 
while on horse-back it is the only way to fire off 
your weapon squarely to the right except by the 
awkward plan of holding the rifle as a pistol. So 
with a golf ball : some day you may discover yours 
4 



50 INSPIRED GOLF 



in a bunker where you can't get at it right-handed 
at all, but where a left-handed club, if you have one 
and can use it, may land j^ou safely on the fair-way. 
After blimdering into a bunker, a triumphant extri- 
cation like that puts you in heart again. You 
need not despise ambidexterity. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOLF 

THERE are no snakes in Iceland," wrote 
the old monk when he began his cele- 
brated chapter, and in like manner I would begin 
this by saying, There is no philosophy of golf.'' 
At any rate, if there be such a thing, the best 
definition of it would be that given by an unhappy 
Oxford undergraduate in his viva voce in Divinity 
when the examiners invited him to define Original 
Sin. " It is," he answered, a fond thing, vainly 
invented, grounded on no certain warranty of 
Scripture . . . He never finished his sentence, 
being promptly ploughed for irreverence by the 
indignant dons. 

Yet I hold that a golfer is bound to be a philoso- 
pher of sorts. There was another celebrated 
question once put at Oxford : " Could a good man 
be happy on the rack ? " To which the reply was 
" Possibly, if he was a very good man, and if it 
was a very bad rack." 

This question (and the answer ?) may be altered 
on the links into Can a good golfer be happy in 
a bunker ? " If he can (and if the bunker be a 
very bad bunker !) then beyond a doubt he is a 

51 



52 



INSPIRED GOLF 



good philosopher. What a true philosopher would 
say under such trying circumstances I hardly know, 
but there is a story of Mr. John Ball, junior, who, 
playing in a championship, bunkered himself, 
failed to get out in one ; tried again, and failed in 
two ; and was heard to miu*mur as he addressed 
his ball for the third time, What a silly old ass 
it is ! " 

If that was not true philosophy I never heard of 
anything half so well deserving of the name. Most 
assuredly if there be one thing certain about golf 
it is that you will sometimes find it very hard to 
keep your temper, more particularly in a bunker ; 
but you had better keep it, if you can, as did he. 
We all know this well enough ; the difficulty lies 
in the doing of it ; while as for ladling out screeds 
of advice on the subject to you, O weak brother, 
well, who am I to preach ? Indeed I have said 
some things in bunkers myself. Nay, even great 
professors, not of golf but of philosophy, can say 
things in a bunker that it would hardly do to 
print here. 

There is a legend in a certain golf club I know of 
concerning the cause of the abrupt termination 
of the right of the club to use a piece of land which 
was private property. The property owner, a 
citizen of credit and renown, had a worthy dame, 
who happened one day to be innocently taking the 
air in the immediate vicinity of the golf course, 
when her ears were scandalised by words of wrath 
issuing from a neighbouring bunker. In the bun- 
ker a struggle was going on between a distinguished 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOLF 53 



elderly philosopher and a golf ball, and the winged 
words that issued from it were such that the lady 
fled in horror, with the result that the lease of the 
course was never renewed. I give this legend 
with the caution that legends are not always 
founded on fact. It is only fair to add that there 
is a totally different version of the story current 
(among the senior club-members) in which the 
whole blame is transferred from professorial 
shoulders to those of certain juniors ; this, as 
Herodotus says, I know but may not relate. 

It is sound philosophy for the golfer to keep 
himself in health by proper exercise, but he need 
not go into such hard training as our boxers and 
runners. Their violent exertions require the heart 
and lungs to be fit to work at concert pitch, but 
the links make no great demand on those organs. 
All the golfer needs is to have his eye clear, his 
muscles elastic, and his nerves right. It can do 
him no harm, however, and may do him good, 
if he does a few physical exercises at home ; but 
how is one to select among the many much adver- 
tised systems that are in vogue ? Dumbells and 
Indian clubs, Swedish or Danish stretching and 
bending movements, gymnastics and elastic cord 
pullers, they are all gooa, that is if you can be 
at the bother of keeping them going. For they 
are contrary to Voltaire's maxim ; they are dull, 
all of them, dull as ditch-water, beyond a doubt. 
On this account, if I may venture personally to 
recommend anything, I would like to put in a word 
for the punching ball. To begin with, I know no 



54 



INSPIRED GOLF 



better form of physical exercise ; and it has a 
special interest of its own in this way, that the 
ball hits back at you, which dumbells and Indian 
clubs and the like never do ; if you don't dodge 
it as it rebounds from the ceiling you may get a 
clip on the nose that will surely waken you up. 
Moreover there is one way of using it that has some 
points very much in common with the full shot at 
golf ; the way is this : strike the ball as hard as ever 
you can and see how many times you can make it 
rebound. The actual number of rebounds will 
depend upon the weight and elasticity of the ball 
and the length of the string by which it is suspended 
as w^ell as on the force of your punch, but j^ou will 
soon find out what number of rebounds constitutes 
your private bogey, and ambition will make you 
want to beat it every time you punch. I compare 
this way of using the punching ball to the full shot 
at golf because in both you look calmly at the 
passive ball waiting there for you to strike ; calmly 
you waggle or measure your distance ; and then 
finally you let go at it with every ounce of strength 
you have got ; you follow through ; and after- 
wards you stand by to watch the effect. Say 
your particular bogey with the punching ball is 
ten rebounds ; any sort of punch will give you 
eight, which is no better than a foozle ; to get nine 
you must hit the ball square in the middle and 
get your body weU behind the blow ; but when 
it bumps the ceiling for the tenth time you know 
you have got in a screamer. As you have to wait 
for half a minute to count the rebounds the delay 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOLF 55 

involved just gives you time to collect yom strength 
for the next shot ; you stop the ball and bring it 
to rest, and then go at it again. Onty when you 
get your whole force into it and hit the ball per- 
fectly true have you a chance of doing your bogey 
score of ten. And every time as you gather your- 
self to strike the hope springs up in you that this 
time you may surpass yourself, and do an eleven. 
For these reasons I say that ball-punching has 
something in common with the golfing drive and 
may therefore prove worth your attention. 

As the parson said in his sermon, one word more 
and I have done. Do not let your practice be 
continued long enough to be a bore, but do let it 
be done in close connection with your reading on 
the subject, or in other words, combine practice 
and theory. So did the immortal Mr. Squeers ex- 
pound his method, c-I-e-a-n, clean, verb active, 
to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, 
winder, a casement. When the boy know^s this 
out of book, he goes and does it." 

How did such a horrible beast as Squeers get 
hold of the true philosophy of education ? For 
such precisely is w^hat that admirable principle of 
his amounts to. 

However, it is time to cail a truce to philosophy. 
I have headed this chapter the philosophy of 
golf," though looking back now I can't see that 
there is much philosophy in it, but that perhaps is 
no great loss, for we are apt to talk (or write) too 
much about the hows and whys of most things ; 
in time-honoured phrase it is better to cut the gab 



56 



INSPIRED GOLF 



and come to the 'osses. I remember once taking 
out a nephew of mine, a hopeful youth, to give 
him a Httle instruction in the art of golf, and 
naturally proceeded to lay down the whole law 
about body-swing, and finger-grip, and keeping 
the head still, and following through, much as I 
have done above. The youth listened awhile with 
attention, and then cut me short with Why, 
uncle, all you've got to do is to look at the ball, 
and hit it ! '' 

I think he hit it that time. 



CHAPTER X 



MERE ANECDOTAGE 

*' Forty years on, growing older and older, 
Shorter in wind but in memory long." 

YES, in memory long ! That is what you, reader, 
will come to be also, if permitted like me to 
reach the threescore years and ten of the Psalmist. 
It is no sort of use to grumble over growing old, 
but one may pick and choose amid the lengthening 
scroll of one's memory and dwell by preference 
on the most cheerful of its contents. The genera- 
tions pass, but the everlasting comedy of youth 
and age is repeated, and to be the elderly treasurer 
of a golf club where your committee consists mostly 
of young men under twenty-one has certain com- 
pensations. 

For instance, I remember how about the end of 
the last century there was a certain reverend and 
very highly distinguished professor, not himself a 
golfer, whose schoolboy sons used to play over 
the course in the holidays. The club fees were 
then, I think, 5/- a week for this privilege, which 
of course during the long holidays comes to a tidy 
sum ; and the professor's wife wrote to the trea- 
surer to know if the club would not let her boys 

57 



58 



INSPIRED GOLF 



have the use of their course on somewhat easier 
terms. 

His reply was to the effect that if the professor, 
even though he was not himself a golfer, cared to 
become a member of the club, he, the treasurer, 
would gladly try to get the club's consent to allow 
his two boys to play free ; and accordingly at the 
next meeting, after reading out the correspondence 
to a roomful of undergraduates forming the com- 
mittee, he observed that he had drafted a rule 
which he thought would meet the case and begged 
to submit it accordingly. 

This suggestion being met with favour, he pro- 
ceeded to read out his proposed new rule, which 
began thus : 

" Rule XXI. That the privilege of using the 
club links be extended during the vacations to the 
sons of members under eighteen years of age . . . 

That first sentence was never finished, being 
drowned in an electric burst of laughter from his 
young friends ; and as the elderly treasurer looked 
up, beaming at them through his spectacles, it 
dawned on him that there was something about the 
wording of his draft that was quite too much for 
the gravity of irresponsible undergraduates. They 
passed his new rule, however, all right, but it was 
passed in a somewhat hastily amended form. 

The relations between father and son must 
always have a peculiar interest for an audience 
made up of young men, who, far from earning their 
own living, are dependent on a paternal allowance. 
Just then the club was parting with its professional ; 



MERE ANECDOTAGE 



59 



he was a celebrated ex-champion of the great 
world of golf, and the club had promoted to the 
vacant place a very promising golfer, a young 
man who had been the assistant professional ; he 
was a local j/outh whose old father happened to 
be employed in the professionaFs shop as a club- 
repairer. Now the committee had made a practice 
of allowing the departing ex-champion, in addi- 
tion to his wages, the half-time services of a boy 
who was paid entirely by the club but worked in 
the afternoons in the shop for the benefit of the 
professional. This privilege had not hitherto been 
extended to the newly-promoted assistant, who 
appealed to the treasurer about it. Very well," 
said the latter, I am quite willing you should 
have it, but I think your best plan will be to write 
me a letter saying exactly what you wish us to do, 
and I will bring the matter before the next meeting 
of the committee." 

The letter was duly written, and the treasurer, 
after telling the committee about it in his own 
words, said : Of course there is a certain compHca- 
tion in the matter, so perhaps I had better read 
you in full exactly what our young professional has 
to say about it himself." 

Accordingly he read out the letter, which, after 
recounting the extra help in the shop which had 
previously been allowed to the departed ex- 
champion, went on to say : You see, sir, that I 
am left with only my father to work under me 
in the shop, and as I cannot very well discharge 
him , , 



60 INSPIRED GOLF 



That sentence likewise was drowned in inextin- 
guishable laughter. The delicate point about the 
difficulty of ' firing out the pater ' tickled irresis- 
tibly the committee of juveniles so that they fairly 
exploded. However, they assented mxost sympa- 
thetically to the newly-made pro.'s application, 
and he was duly allowed half a boy's time.'' 

Golf has so completely conquered the country 
now that the younger generation mostly gets hold 
of the elements of the game in childhood ; but 
twenty years ago it was quite otherwise, and 
tall, powerful athletes, coming up from school to 
the 'Varsity, knew almost nothing of golf. I re- 
member once, when I was striking off to the eleventh 
hole on the Cowley course, which is the nearer of 
the two University courses at Oxford, a couple of 
raw undergraduates were just playing to the 
fourth, which is exactly parallel to the eleventh 
hole but is played in the opposite direction, so that 
a badly pulled shot at either hole will leave the 
ball in the fairway of the other. I was walking 
to my ball after the drive, when I saw one of the 
men who were playing to the fourth turn consider- 
ably to his own left, march to where I expected 
mine to lie, and whack a ball from there into a 
yawning bunker. When I hurried to where my 
ball should most certainly have been Ijdng, no 
ball whatever was to be seen, and I called after 
him with some severity, I'm afraid you've 
played my ball, sir." 

Back came the indignant denial : ''No, indeed, 
sir, Tve done nothing of the sort." 



MERE ANECDOTAGE 61 



Then came * whack ' at the poor thing reposing 
helpless in the bunker below him, and ' whack ' 
again, and then a third blow which fetched the 
victim of wrath out on to the green. Meantime, 
not finding mine, I hurried after the culprit, stopped 
him as he was preparing for yet another blow, 
pointed to the woefully scarred ball, and said, If 
youll look at that thing I think you'll find my 
initials on it/' He stooped and picked it up. 

" Oh, so it is ! I say, sir, Tm awfully sorry ! 
I hadn't the least idea ! And I've knocked it 
about frightfully ! Look here, sir, have another 
. . and the ingenuous youth, diving into a 
side pocket, produced a brand-new ball which he 
tried hard to get me to accept. I believe he was 
really contrite, and dismissed him with my blessing. 

The Oxford atmosphere is sometimes accused 
of fostering rather alarming socialistic tendencies 
among its youth, and it is true that the doctrine 
of community of goods finds a certain acceptance 
with junior members of the University. I remem- 
ber once walking up to the club-house on the 
old Hinksey hnks, the first day of term, just to 
see how things were. Not many of the young 
men had come up to the course so soon, but one 
of those that had done so was an undergraduate 
whose native heath was Hoylake, the second-best 
course in England, and who occasionally con- 
descended to give me a liberal allowance of strokes 
and a beating. 

Would you care for a game, sir ? " he asked, 
seeing me there without a partner. 



62 INSPIRED GOLF 

Very much/' I replied, but Tve been away 
for the vacation and I haven't brought my clubs 
with me to-day/' 

Oh/' said he, if you didn't mind playing 
with strange clubs I think I could fit you out " ; 
and I watched him pop into one undergraduate 
locker after another, extracting a driver here, a 
brassy there, and a variety of irons elsewhere, till 
he had got together a goodly set. Perhaps these 
might suit you, sir," he smiled, and then we 
could have a round." 

We had it, and I only hope that if ever the lawful 
owners got those clubs back they found them not 
very much the worse for wear. Nor is it under- 
graduates alone who play a part in our eternal 
comedy of 5^outh and age. Caddy boys also come 
on to the stage ; though at Oxford we do not have 
many of them, as the younger men mostly prefer 
to cany their own clubs. I knew once a professor 
who went out for a game with a friend, both of 
them being Irish and (occasionally) given to pic- 
turesque exaggeration. They struck off ; and 
their performances were anything but brilliant, it 
must be confessed, at the first couple of holes ; 
and then as they walked to the third tee the pro- 
fessor gaily remarked, I shan't be able to give 
you anything of a match to-day, old chap, I was 
beastly drunk last night." 

You don't come that over me," retorted his 
friend. Last night I was at a College Gaudy 
and I had a good skinful of champagne." And 
then it suddenly dawned on him that to-day as it 



MERE ANECDOTAGE 



68 



chanced he had taken out a caddy, a verj^ rare 
thing with him. And remembering also Horace's 
famous line, " Maxima debetur puero reverentia,'' 
he turned sharp round to the smug-faced urchin 
at his heels with, We don't really mean it, you 
know/' 

Oh, NO, sir," came the prompt answer of the 
wily infant ; but the unbelieving grin with which 
he uttered those three words revealed the real 
opinion of his class as to the true moral character 
of senior members of the Universitj^ Golf Club. 

A MILLION TO ONE 

Hurrah for the tee's flat stand, 

Your ball on its pinch of sand, 

The slow back swing, 

The loose wrist fling, 

And the drive which is simply grand ! 

Hurrah for that second clean 

From a lie just fit for a queen 

With the best club you've got. 

When a lightning shot 

Lays the ball right there on the green ! 

Hurrah for the long putt free, 

The putt that's meant to be 

Down all the way, 

Let come what may ; 

And that four hole done in three ! 

Ah would it were ever thus, 
When you never need make a fuss 
Bunkered heavy in sand, 
Other bunkers at hand. 
And nothing to do but cuss. 



INSPIRED GOLF 

You count up your hopeless score : 

Already you've played two more : 

Your opponent grins 

While you think of your sins, 

But remember you've been there before ! 

And miracles happen in golf 
Sometimes even when you are ofE ; 
It's a million to one, 
Yet the thing has been done, 
Holing out with a niblick loft. 

Then here's to the glorious game 

That never is twice the same ; 

May we all of us play 

Till our final day 

And then not fail of our aim. 



Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London 



